The demand for wireless data services continues to increase exponentially. As the demand for data grows, techniques capable of delivering higher data rates to mobile devices continue to be of interest. One way to deliver higher data rates is to increase the spectral bandwidth available to wireless communication systems.
Reflecting the trend to use increasing bandwidth, current versions of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks have up to 100 megahertz (MHz) available for communication. Moreover, it is possible that future networks, such as fifth generation (or 5G) networks, may utilize several hundred MHz or more in an attempt meet future demand for data services.
As system bandwidth increases, data transmission can increase roughly proportionally without incurring a similar proportional increase in control overhead. Thus, in future time division multiplex (TDM) systems that multiplex control and data channels, there may be scenarios in which it would be inefficient for control channels to occupy as much bandwidth as data channels. There are inefficiencies both because spectral resources may be used unnecessarily that could be better utilized for other purposes and because mobile devices would be tuned to a larger bandwidth than needed, thereby wasting energy resources. Thus, there is a need to more efficiently multiplex control and data channels as available bandwidth increases in wireless communication systems.